The invention relates to automated systems for communication recognition and understanding.
Today there are many automated dialog systems in operation that serve many purposes, such as for customer care. Because they limit human involvement, such systems save millions of dollars in labor costs. Examples of such systems are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,675,707, 5,860,063, 6,044,337, and 6,173,261, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/943,944, filed Oct. 3, 1997, Ser. Nos. 09/699,494, 09/699,495, and 09/699,496 all filed Oct. 31 2000, and Ser. Nos. 09/712,192 and 09/712,194, both filed Nov. 15, 2000, each of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
While it has recently become possible to build spoken dialog systems that interact with users in real-time in a range of domains, systems that support conversational natural language are still subject to a large number of language understanding errors. Endowing such systems with the ability to reliably distinguish language understanding errors from correctly understood communications might allow them to correct some errors automatically or to interact with users to repair them, thereby improving the system""s overall performance.
This invention concerns a method and system for monitoring an automated dialog system for the automatic recognition of language understanding errors based on a user""s input communications in a task classification system. The method may include determining whether the user""s input communication can be understood in order to make a task classification decision. If the user""s input communication cannot be understood and a task classification decision cannot be made, a probability of understanding the user""s input communication may be determined. If the probability exceeds a first threshold, further dialog may be conducted with the user. Otherwise, the user may be directed to a human for assistance.
In another possible embodiment, the method operates as above except that if the probability exceeds a second threshold, the second threshold being higher than the first, then further dialog may be conducted with the user using the current dialog strategy. However, if the probability falls between a first threshold and a second threshold, the dialog strategy may be adapted in order to improve the chances of conducting a successful dialog with the user.
This process may be cumulative. In particular, the first dialog exchange may be stored in a database. Then, a second dialog exchange is conducted with the user. As a result, a second determination is made as to whether the user""s input communication can be understood can be conducted based on the stored first exchange and the current second exchanges. This cumulative process may continue using a third and fourth exchange, if necessary.